Deep Ties

This triad of stories by Mona Verma boasts of a theme quite unique, of relationships unimagined, and biases that rule. Whether it is the middle-aged Mansi and her perceptions in the story titled ‘I Need Colour’, or the 30-year-old Angela and her guilt in ‘Just at the Finishing Line’, or the older Bala and his patriarchal prejudices that cloud his thinking in ‘The Invisibles’, the readers are stopped in their tracks and made to ponder. While all three stories are diametrically different, a common thread ties them together. They are sagas of when the paramount disparity arises out of degrees of difficulties. Life can often be unpredictable, where the worthy lose their self-worth as the decades go by, and the mediocre come up through sheer luck and opulence. When neglect hangs in the air, only because no one has bothered to bring the sparkle back in life. At times, the weight of guilt is too heavy to shoulder, and “remorse is an unrelenting tormentor.” Friendships are pricele

Anurag Anand’s three stories bring in the gravity of the pandemic that has overtaken the world. Bhumika, an aspiring actress, who is living it up, gets a break in an acclaimed web series. How does her life change when a virus makes her plans go awry? The second story, titled ‘Corona Mai’, takes an amusing look at the how a little hoax can take on giant proportions, involving a whole village of gullible believers and canny upstarts who milk the situation for all they are worth. ‘One for the Road’ brings alive the worst nightmare that a woman can face in the times of lockdown. In a world that has turned topsy-turvy, these three tales by Anurag Anand touch upon realities that thousands of people are going through across the world. Apart from his riveting style and his penchant for apt characterization, it is the looming spectre of the corona virus that makes his narration gripping.

I have always run away from science fiction, mainly because I feel that my brain is not wired to enjoy it. However, ‘Revolt of the Lamebren’ by Manjiri Prabhu uncrossed those wires because I did read the book, and I did enjoy it as well. The novel opens in the engineered Ace-World of the Altklugs, hassle-free and disease-free, where there is zero tolerance for wastage of time, “a world of limitless possibilities and perfection”.   What, then, mars this seemingly perfect world? On the other side exist the lamebren, a word coined from lamebrain, a species pitiable, helpless and unaware of their fate. They cower under the tyranny of the super-intelligent Altklugs, with no control over their miserable lives. It is into this world that G 23, a brilliant lamebirl who prefers to call herself Zinnia, is thrown. A square peg in a round hole, Zinnia is a true heroine, who refuses to knuckle down to the Altklugs, and her brave struggle for justice and survival is the theme of